Feelings won't do

Michael Chertoff has a "gut feeling" that America may suffer a terrorist attack this summer. Nothing definite -- just a "gut feeling." When Carl Sagan, astronomer, Cornell University professor and co-founder of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, was pressed for his "gut feeling" about the possibility of extraterrestrial life, he replied, "But I try not to think with my gut. Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in." Most of us have hunches, also called "gut feelings," but most of us do not have the responsibilities and resources that Chertoff does. Surely we can find someone to head the Department of Homeland Security who thinks with his brain rather than feels with his gut.